A greater Breadth and Depth of thought with respect to impactful things is what makes something high in intellectual value. Explained below are what is length and what is breadth and neurally whats needed for length and breadth.

Treat this as a fair/latest draft and the below as a rough draft. some points may be contradicting
How thought works and what makes somethin a deep/great intellectual thought?

yesterday my mom started off a rant with ‘people seem to be taking pleasure in
others misery’. I dont know which partcular instance (or who in particular did
what) gave this thought to her but i heard her start that way.

Then almost immediately – she went on to say ‘ such bad people seem to be growing
everyday’.

The other day i was driving a car back from down south to chennai, and I thought to
myself, we should make a tamil version of the movie ‘locke’ . Then i asked myself
which car?the guy in the movie was driving a bmw. may be honda city, the one that
I was driving. Then, I started thinking about how embarrasing this would be if
someone from UK watched the movie with honda civic. Coz honda city is not exactly
a ‘cool’ car there.
I have been exposed to a bit of hebbian association and conditioned learning,
neural nets and so I try to explain why/how my mom inferred the second part and why
I thought about what foreigners would think about the car used in my imaginary
tamil movie.

Watson said ‘thought is sub-vocal speech’, i go on to add + images,sounds and other
senses.
So during thinking, in your conscience(also mean the area in your brain which
constitutes it), several of these images n sounds have to appear by that i mean the
neurons(we’ll call them thought area) representing these stuff gets activated . The
reason why thought is logical and not random is when one area gets excited, the
activation moves to another region which is closely associated with that area. lets
not worry about how these associations are formed, but just know that they are
formed – if you wanna know more, read a bit about pavlov’s dog and bone experient.
When my mom was talking about a type bad people doing stuff on whatsapp – this
piece of thought had several images,concepts constituting it. One such concept was
the concept of ‘people’. And another concept that is associated with the concept of
‘people’ is that ‘people grow in number’ – maybe not today in that particular street,
but in stories and history of things one has read or learnt before. So now in my
moms conscience/thought , there are still those bad people and now they appear to
be growing(maybe she thought about someone or two thats been mean to her personally, but they appearing to be growing in number is a concept deducted from above). So now she has made a new association between the concept of ‘bad
people’ and the concept of ‘people growing’ and now created a new concept that ‘bad
people are growing’ . Ofcourse many people will once again think about what they
are saying before they make a statement by thinking empirically or thinking about
other stuff and double check whether the new concept/logic sits well with other
concepts.

This thought flow actually goes back and forth, coz if it is only one way, no one
would remember what problem they are trying to solve like in memento. So from ‘bad
people growing’ you go back to ‘bad people’, and may be think of ‘other bad things’
and claim that these ‘bad people’ also do those ‘other bad stuff’ and the rant goes
on. Sometimes you go more than one thought step in a direction and after ‘bad
people are growing’ concept is formed, you might form another concept ‘ at this
rate there will be more destruction and world will end soon’ without coming back to the ‘other bad things’.
So this is how new concepts are associated and the number of thought steps taken
right from the starting point is what is the collective new thought. Now what happens with back and forth activation is that a weightage increases between thougth area 1 and thought area 3 so that the next time you thin of 1, 3 could get activated without having to activate 2 first to get to 3. If there is little back n forth activation, 1 might not get strongly associated with 3 and chances are next time 1 gets activated, 2 gets activaed and something else 4 gets activated forgetting about 3. Light headed people – and people who just do useless blabbering keep on moving from one thought area to other, without making the connection. And in the end they havent really concocted all concepts into a theory coz they have not associated new things together in other words not learnt anything there.

So we go to the different components of this process – if you read my rough draft,
i might have explained a bit more in detail about the ‘thought cone’ which might
also tell you more of what i had in mind
1) Depth/length of thought – the number of thought steps in a single direction. for
example from ‘bad people’ to ‘bad people growing’ to ‘end of world’. now this doesnt mean that the thought area of final step is physically at a greater distance from first thought area…these neurons between points 1 and 3 could be closer than 1 and 2 for instance
2) Breadth of thought – All the things brought to be evaluated. for example, bad
people growing, other bad things etc etc.
3) correctess of logic – This is just a case of verifiying if the ‘new concept’ you
created sits well with many other things that you know. This again requires the
ability to bring in a greater amount of things to process, or rather going to great
depths and breadth of thought to imagine the implications the ability to see that
implications of new concepts might contradict established concepts. So the
correctness of logic is again a derived component of the lengh and breadth of
thought. a new thought might be incorrect if it contradicts an old well established logic otherwise if the new thought sits well with other stuff, the old logic is what is incorrect.

This is why no theory is complete if it is just deep. It has to bring in a breadth
of different concepts and have the ability to associate a wide range of things. Infact breadth is a more important aspect and only if there are a breath of different things brought it, one can actually achieve depth…..think abt this carefully.

In the RD section, I have gone on to classify the Length and breadth in various
ways – in more detail but lets just restrict the whole thing to length and breadth
in this section.

You are able to go back and forth quickly( like a million times a sec) coz when you
move from one thought to the associated thought(A to B) the association between the
two (A and B) is the strongest than with (B to someother concept C) coz the
activation is fresh and according to hebbian rule weightage of connection between
these 2 is very high and weightage only gradually decreases/decays with lack of
activation. But gradually things move from either B to C or from A to D etc.

The ability to bring in a lot of concepts ( breadth) depends on prior learning/associating and neural
stucture. Young people know few stuff thats why they are unidemnsional in their
thought. Mature people bring in a lot of factors to evaluate about a single thing.
Neurally, your nerve connectivity should be good across several areas of your brain
so that many different thoughts get associated with one another.

Neurally there are the following criteria that affects your brains processing
ability

1) Neuronal density. ( by genetics as well as health/nurture)
2) Number of healthy connections and connectivity to neighbouring neurons.( like
regions pertaining to algebra being strong, regions pertaining to music being
good). This includes lower activation thresholds in those regions. – determined by
age/healthy eating. Regional strength is determined by genetics
3) Activation potential – spicy food makes more ions in the cerebro-spinal fluid
enabling more activation/electricity in your nervous system
4) Better connectivity in the larger contour , Not just connectivity to neighbouring neurons, but several regions well connected of the pre-frontal cortex or wherever the conscience is. This is also influenced/determined by genetics

The above 4 factors are heavily influenced by genetics mostly and second by
nurture/health/age

———————————–
Spicy food makes one more bright and bland food – not so much invigorating
intellectually.So like I said, for breadth( and for the ability to go back and forth) one needs healthy connectivity between different thought areas (4).For attention to detail and memorising one would need (1). For greater depth of thought one needs knowledge and
healthy connectivity( local mostly). Think about this — the activation is there in an area and it keeps moving back and forth and gradualy across to neighboouring neurons. If the ACtivation stagnates in one area and is concentrated too much, it means it is not able to move to another area – this is enitrely an issue of not so good connectivity across different areas. If theres is good connectivity/connection weightage between the nerve endings, the activation would split and go across different directions and consitiute bringing in different thought and constituting a higher breadth of thought. Otherwise the activation just stagnates among neurons very heavily associated. i mean associated also means well connected, but this well connectedness arises out of hebbian association from learning rather than naturaly healthy/strongly connected neurons – based on healthy connection fibers and low activation threshold.

Young ones move from one thought area to another
easily and get a bigger depth of thought, but this cant called be depth as the depth
is broken as there are no associations made from the starting thought point to the
latest — they simply just drift away in thought, they are not exactly constructing
a deep thougth. Whereas mature ones and even ones with higher breadth ability tend
to be static at times thinking about the same thing for a long time, and not really
moving on, connecting a greater depth of things ( an example is given in the RD
section). I can actually go on explaining drunkenness, and subconscious ease at driving while thinking about other stuff — with the same above concept. Drunkeness is again losing connectivity/breadth of thought under influence and having a uni-dimensional, broken thought(similar to childlike state). Sub-conscious driving/reflexes are just strong association from hebbian learning that occurs during practice – even without focusing(and larger activation), these areas get enough activation coz of the strong connection strength.

Knowledge plays an important role in the direction/depth of thought. For
exaple I thought about how embarrassing it would be if a westerner sees my
imaginary movie, coz im always comparing western and indian standards having lived
in west for 4 + years and thinking a lot about how the western world views us. Same
way people who are more focused on politics tend to gradually link many things to
politics — ones tastes and knowledge influences the direction of their thought
via the conditioned association process.

The conscience is the last region in the brain, the different regions receive the
inputs and finally all the sights sounds etc comes together and gets associated
with each other in the conscience part – this is either conscience or the pre-
frontal cortex — which is the exchange region. So in this region

So people with high neuronal density will be able to memorise a lot of details. But
if in the region of conscience, if there is good connectivity/fluidity across – it
is good for the breadth component – bringing in several aspects pertaining to one
thing. Bookworm nerds/specialitsts – have a narrow way of forming thought and all
the activation is focused greatly in just one path.this is kinda how young people
think but with more details.
So the only difference between thought stagnating in one region/unidimensional vs
being a well rounded thought is healthy connectivity. more neuronal density = more
memory, but good connectivity(healthy nerve endings) = more fluidity across all
directions. i mean if you look into it – the same amount of electricity of
activation can activate either few nerve cells or more cells depending upon
activation threshold AND connection weightage. So connection weightage between
neurons have to be good for well rounded thinking and bringing in different
aspects. For people who only memorise things — genetically the connection
weightage will have been less across many regions and consequently overall less
weightage connectivity in the brain. If you do not often different things into your thought, connecting strengths/fluidity across areas of thought decreases and this not so well connected structure is also passed on genetically.
So being a mindless memoriser might give you high neuronal density, but it is
damaging for the connections in the long run. And only with good connectivity can
on bring different aspects/dimension to a thought and have a comprehensive n
creative thoughts.

local healthy neuronal density – more concepts in a specific focus – depth of thought, easy for memorising

Connectivity across different areas of thought – Breadth of thought

Knowledge – breadth and depth of thought

3)Activation potential – bright mind vs bland/dull mind

———————

One last thing is, people who think about high impact stuff may seem more
intelligent.someone who talks about agro stuff is not seen as an intellectual
compared to someone who can talk politics or the market, although the depth and
breadth of the concepts maybe higher in what the farmer says. Physicists are regarded
high coz their knowledge explains most things-forces around us and therefore an
understading of that seems empower us more. same with someone geo-politics, money
matters etc commpared to some village stuff or whatever.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

Rough Draft

Southies and Tamils in general like to claim that they are more Intelligent. This is an attempt to say how. I realise this might annoy many out there..but to those people I say..you wouldnt complain about me saying that north indians are more attractive – which i have in my other blogs. I believe that indians are the most intelligent people in the world. 1)Amount of thoughts one evaluates/processes simultaneously & balance of thought : Certain people(also neotenous people), at a given time have less things on their mind…they evaluate lesser amount of things (other thoughts or brain activities) while formulating their thought. This can also be termed as brain activity in terms of number of activations and flow of different thoughts in the brain. A child who wants chocolate thinks only about the chocolate( only one thought) But a parent is evaluating a number of things such as good/badness, the cost, the effort, the right thing to do for the child etc etc. This ability to consider all aspects,side of things leads to maturity, ability to judge better and a balanced behaviour. I mean, its also not exactly thinking about it different thoughts simultaneously or inparallel…..but somehow they think about every associated aspect/factor pertaining to something by means of well rounded thinking every moment of their consciousness. This ability of well-roundedness is in the neural structure of your brain(genetic and conditioning/nurture), where strong and connections are made between associated things and so that one thinks about a particular thing,all associated relevant things also comes into mind(refer’my idea for a robot post). Actually even for the below factors/way of thinking too, its about how well two things get associated in the brain and thought flows, but I guess the difference is in the orientation of the flow of activation/thought which i will explain.So this comprehensive association /taking into consideration and bringing in all associated aspects pertaining to something is important and people who do not posses this ability but go on to construct deeper logic become quite imbalanced..like those Phd cookoos who get possessed by an illogical construct or in another type of issue sometimes fail to focus on all aspects of their life. People with the ability to consider all aspects of an issue are generally not self-centred and are able to put themselves in others shoes. Their tone of voice is also more humble and mature as they are considering how they sound to the others and dont wanna come across as boorish or self-righteous. While dealing with any issue/concept..they always recall and evaluate all things associated with it and based on that – form a reasoning or inference. Maturity basically means acting appropriately..the more factors you consider, the more appropriate your actions will be(I mean considering more factors also leads to a deeper logic 3A and thus help in a appropriate action). It can be made out from their uninhibited and confident tone of talking that north indians process lesser number of things while articulating, and the whites are considering even lesser things than indians. I suspect that people who have been insulted,punished,reprimanded or let down in anyway more often while growing tend to consider a lot more things before they speak as they are a bit more mindful/aware of not getting a desired response from the others. Hence people who are not as attractive/admired consider/evaluate a lot more factors. In the case of south indians factor 6 below also comes into play where everone in the society is preconditioned to a deep and mature thought and way of carrying themselves such as being very calm, speaking softly and being less aggressive, forthcoming or childish and more inhibitive/curbing of their enthusiasm n stuff. But apart from the impact of society/environment, the natural ability to consider different factors also comes inherently/genetically. These are generalised scores.Some individuals of a group may exceed the avg value mentioned. 20 doesnt mean no room for improvemet. When I mention a group, its not about if they are urban or rural dwellers, its just the picture that comes to my mind abt tat group. for example whn i say tamils – i mostly think about ones from chennai and asian may refer to a mix of FOBs and second gens living in west that i ve come across. Africans – a combo of african africans and afro-american in combination. Africans – 9 Chinese – 12 White Europeans – 11 Jewish- 13 Arab – 13.5 NI – 15,16 BE – 17 TA – 20 MA – 18 TE – 18 KA – 18 2)Correctness of complex logic/direction: its that ability to rightly associate things or investigate/think about it thoroughly before associating things to form a logic. It also means understanding/interpreting what one reads/sees/hears in the right way. having a good vocabulary( remembering is another aspect of having a vocabulary, but this is about the application aspect. Also i do not consider remembering ability to be an major aspect of intelligence) and eloquent writing are also the effects of having the correctness of learning the rules and applying those rules. People with a lot of pre-conceived notions,closed minded people and biased people in denial all get this wrong – despite thinking a lot. No saying if one group gets it correct than the other on average. This is becoz people who only have simple things on mind will get it right most of the time, and people who have many things on their mind or have deep thought all the time are prone to have logical fallacies. But To evaluate correctly one must also first consider all factors behind it and apply your logic correctly although the higher the number of factors to consider..the complex the logic gets and more prone to logical fallacies. I mean, maybe if one were to analyse the IQ scores of shape association there might be some insights there. But being able to consider a lot of things in mind- despite making someone prone to errors, that ability i guess would also make some one process/evaluate a lot of things and make a right association. So the above scores are also applicable this section. I mean lets consider a basic – getting it right scenario. Lets say going for option 1 helps 20 people and going for option 2 helps 100 people in the same amount. There it is easy to determine option 2 as the right option. So for every single option/point/logic/factor the brain associates and amount of goodness/sense/appropriate consequence etc. The amount is not always a number but just a cloud. So when you consider many different factors, this sense/consequence cloud gets more weightage towards a particular decision/thought/point towards which your thought further flows. So this is why the correctness ability also depends on bringing in/associating a lot of thought and consequently bringing in/associating the corresponding logical/consequence amount-cloud with it. 3) Depth and breadth of thought : depends on how one has learnt/constructed a deeper logic using their ability. Breadth of thought is how many different concepts one is able to bring into a thought, whereas the depth signifies the level of each of those concepts – there are some concepts which are quite basic, whereas some are more advanced.Within this, constructing deeper thought is more tougher than concocting a number of things into a theory. Even people who have lesser brain activity might have focused a lot and constructed a deeper/broader logic. For example the theories of someone like rajiv malhotra are more profound than that of lets say gurumurthy. Examples of the breadth of thought is- drawing analogies, bringing in a lot of facts on a related thing – for example when one talks about neoteny – its features, how its applicable amongst animals, and all those observations regarding that particular concept. Whereas when one talks about Depth, its will be like talking about how neoteny is thought to have became embedded with social structure and impacting the geo-political and the everyday scenarios today and those implications(Where one drives the thought towards a new inference and thus comes up with a logic/concept in doing so) . The breadth only means different simpler concepts which are quite apparent. The difference between 1 and the breadth in 3(B) is that in 1 you are considering all the factors that impact your decision on a particular thing. But in 3, its only different concepts, which do not necessarily bear an impact on each other, but those which are just associated in whatever way to each other and can just be concocted to form an essay or something. In short 1 vs 3B is Factors vs related facts/things. Another example to differentiate depth3 A from 1 – When rajiv malhotra talks about how ancient knowledge from india is being passed on to foreigners who take it abroad, repackage it and sell it back to indians, he talks about a deeper process of how this U turn happens and leads to indianness being digested/lost in the western international framework . An example for 1 would be how judges work by taking into account everything or how the planning commission works or the budget is made considering all the factors and perspectives of the society. well assessing the need and allocating of funds is 1, but an elaorate plan to create/build something to address things will be 3A. Another example is when someone talks about the religion 1 is taking into consideration all known facts/points/aspects about what it is and the factors that impact it. For example thinking about/taking into consideration how religion came out of man’s lack of better explanation for forces, and that it reduced violence and barbaricness and the fact that a lot of philosphy and scientific/healthy practices got embedded into it. whereas a 3A would be about inferring or implying something less obvious like how it impacts other things like politics,human behaviour in current day situation. So basically 3A is the new inference/insight/depth one formulates in his mind, which can be used in the future as 1(factor) driving other thought. So to any thought you construct,there is the base of factors accounted, length and breadth of logic. It can be imagined like a cone whose base is 1 and its height denoting the depth mentioned in 3 A(breadth of 3b is just a collection of other smaller cones/thoughts that occur adjacent to the main thought). Each of the factors themselves may have sub factors and represent a certain depth of thought(like 2,8 in the below diagram). The diagram and the connections is not accurate to whats being explained but try to picture this – When one starts his thought with the point 4, the factors(1) that a mature person brings to the picture and evaluates are 5,6,7 and possibly 3 as well(the connection is not obvious). An immature person may not be able to think about all the relevant factors(points 5,6,7,3). So by considering the comprehensive factors, they might arrive at a new thought point 2 and it goes higher/deeper into 1 this way. So thats the depth 3A. Regarding 3b imagine someone in point 4, and assume that point 10 is another thing associated with it something like thinking about cricket, to australia to dil chatah hai movie or something – a bunch of things associated with one another. Young, light headed people keep jumping across different associated points(3B) without dwelving deep into one thought area like mature ones do. And consequently are more fun for the others coz they can keep talking about a lot of stuff and be fun or interesting. But in the end, they stay in the same thought level, dont realise a greater depth of logic or something new, by traversing along the same thought points that they are already aware of – unless somewhere they stumble/drift into the logical depth component as well in that process. It is also important that they are able to have correctness of logic(in the above case would be like relating to logical/thought points correctly). other wise they are just constructing a deep bullshit or irrelevant points to the issue you are discussing.Considering a lot of factors (1) is important, but also rightly evaluating the factors to consider (2) to construct the theory or address(or ignoring inappropriate points) an issue is also important. Any theory will have to account for a number of factors and also associate several concepts/train of thought to achieve a depth. This is the primary recognition of intellect such as nobel prize winners/inventors and other intellectual achievers have all constructed a great depth(3A) of thought for which they are recognised as such. Also understanding a complex theory/a bigger picture is also based on this ability, however constructing a new complex logic is much harder and higher than understanding existing complex logic. Actually when i say considering/evaluating different things regarding something, there are not parallel thought processes that happen. Thought is always linear, its just curled up like a spring to cover different areas to sorta give rise to the thought cone described above. to give you a better picture, consider the below images When we start to think of something,it starts with the apex of 1st image. And the same linear thought process covers up a whole length(3) and spectrum(1) of things. Generally speaking the thought process has the orientation of image 2. We start from a thing(at the apex) and in our brain, there are connections and weightages associated between related things to the original thing, and in a spiral-linear fashion we think about all those things and bring them to-gether to evaluate. So we start with point D and bring to-gether the factors associated A,B and C. So A,B & C are factors directly associated with D with higher connection weightage(as created by the hebbian rule). So bringing in all these facotrs into a thought process is skill 1. Now depth is again spiraling down and reaching the depth – point E which is associated with C but not originally or directly related to original point D. The difference between 3A depth and 3B breadth is that, 3A is the process of getting to point E, whereas 3B is the process of getting to some other point associated with C lets assum X(not in picture) which has no bearing on the direction D-C-E. Thats is X is just in the level of the line ABC and related to C (or maybe even D and A,B) but DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE toward the path of getting to thought E. The factor 5 is something Y in a totally different thought cone that may very remotely be related to C but not at all related to any of the thought points in contentions -A,B,D and hence also has no bearing on getting to the depth E. I mean 5 is a jump to a completely different thougth area/domain for example talking about the cricket match in australia to world war 2 all of a sudden. So 3A is the only component where thought/logic is constructed keeping the original thoughts in mind, or rather STICKING TO THE POINT. So at the end of this thought process, the person has learnt something and has acquired a logical depth associating point D with E. If this person had high component of 1, the next time he thinks about D, he will also bring in E along with all the other factors(A,B,C) while evaluating things, otherwise if he is an immature,childish person..will be quite narrow minded and only bring in point C when thinking about D the next time. Actually one doesnt always have to strictly follow a linear path to make the association between D and E. Some people always try to relate things to certain topic. For example, for a patriotic person any issue.like immigration,legislation, culture or anything at all(which would be D), he will somehow try to keep in mind the national interest (E) and try to relate that concept D with national interest (E) and focus his thought in that Direction. This happens becoz even though the hebbian weightage is low between D and E initially, the person is a patriot and the area E generally gets more activation time and hence he frequently brings E into the things he thinks about and thought frequently spiral towards E (using the hebbian way). People who bring in a lot of factors (1) will also be positioned to drive a deeper thought, as considering a lot of thought will help get to the depth. So the 2 things that drive Intellectual depth 3a are 1) a persons interest in high funda stuff(like philosophy/national interests) and 2) Ability to hold and process as many thoughts(which is also the requirement for factor 1) )that helps them drive a deeper association/logic while also staying to the point. Probably a larger/more folded neo-cortex or the appropriate weightage/neural connections/activation potential to do this processing in neo-coretex(or the appropriate area)….which is determined by genetics as well as nurture/conditioning from the up-bringing environment/background. Just to reiterate in a different way…1)Amount of thought..considering all associated factors covering a larger area/spectrum of thought….also includes deeper/higher logic in each spectrum.3) Deeper thought involves not stagnating in one thought area but healthy enough to keep constructing/associating with things related/known/comes to mind or to think of a logic that is quite deep. People with higher component in 1 are able to pay attention/consider a lot of things like everything that is said, the speakers tone,demeanor,and things to consider like etiquette,morality, etc etc. People who are deep thinkers may become quite inconsiderate/absent minded regarding some of the above things.because there is a trade off between the components, when there is more activation focused on one section the activation is less in the other section of the brain. This is probably why a group like telugus who have a higher component in 1 do not necessarily go on to construct deeper logic with respect to a subject..they make good I.T. people but not good inventors or creators of ideas. However, whites due to their knowledge can go on to construct new concepts, and bengalis due to their inherent potential and neotenous mind can go on to construct deeper/new logic. Since Im biased towards tamils, im gonna say tamils have high potential and the brains structure to have higher processing ability along both components 1 and 3A. Both depend on ability to associate things and construct a larger thought. The difference is 1 involves processing every thing that comes to mind wrt an issue and make a comprehensive assesment whereas 3 involves having a direction/objective and construct thoughts to formulate a plan/solution. 1 is simply recalling things we have thought about before and already associated. 3 is making a new association between 2 things in your head. 3 is obviously the new thought you are generating and the most rewarding brain activity. Obviously to imagine and associate things, you gotta have knowledge,education,exposure and those nurture factors mentioned in 4. Person who has 1 but not 3 is a good developer/engineer. So please dont say chinese should score high on 1 now coz chinese are just hard-working and not so high inherent potential. Writers usually have a lot of 3B component in their work whereas scientists and thesis contains a igh 3A comonent. And europeans and jews may look like they are onto deeper stuff, but its only becoz of war,wealth,knowledge,exposure and being in a modern developed societies with a lot of things going on..so the orientation/society(4) factor helps then – not that they are inherently capable of generating more thought than indians. person who has good 3 but not 1 is a philosoper or in some cases artists…and then there are inventors and geniuses who are strong in both components. For these things again you need a lot of thinking potential/brain activity to drive deeper thought(so people who consume spicy, healthy,fishy things have more activity on general). not only thinking potential but also correctness of logic and evaluate a lot of factors while constructing the logic. And also a good brain structure through your genetics to be able to construct deeper thoughts. This also depends on the background in which you grew up/learnt ….conditioning from the way people around you construct logic and behave also influences your ability to construct logic. Trying to pen down all the things required in the brain, 1) A lot of activation(or thought current/voltage) : The more ions i the elecrolytic solution in the brain..the more activation potential you have. after all the activation is the thought. These Na, K ions are present a lot in salt/spicy food. There is also a saying in tamil ‘dont you add salt in your food?’ meaning ‘dont you have any shame/realisation in you’?. So more activation potential you have in your brain your gonna have more excitiation/feelings/thoughts. People with less activation are ofcourse quite dull..so go eat spicy food. The other factors influence the orienatation of thought. I mean with just a high potential in your brain, if the potential is just concentrated on one area alone..thats just all your thought concetrated on a simple area…like for example kids, when then are eating chocolate..they enjoy the chocolate a lot more than adults do but are thinking only about the chocolate . If someone wants to come up with a theory of everything, he needs not just the activation, but the activation oriented into different thoughts..for which the below brain structure comes into play. 2) Activation threshold of neurons : If the neuronas are healthy, they have a lower activation threshold…so even with limited activation thought flows in that neuronal path. This property may also be inherited genetically. if a lot of areas of brain have healthy neurons with low threshold thought flows into them . people with healthy omega 3 fatty acids consumption can have such healthy neurons and so more thoughts flow in their mind..potentially leading to a higher component of 3A, 3B

3) easier Association between neuronal connections: Neuronal connections have weightages associated to them. If the neurons are healthy, the connection weightages is also high. The connection weightages between neurons /neuronal pathways/different areas also increase according the hebbian rule (via learning ), and this weightages property is also passed through genetics. In other words, the neural connections/pathways have to be strong in the brain – inherited from genetics.This drives the Higher component 3b of tamils/south indians – their genetics and culture/mannerisms/way of thinking.

4) Number/Density of neurons : More neuronal density in certain sections of the brain(gotten from genetics mainly, and nurtured by effort and learning) allows the people to be able to process a lot of thought in that area(be it musical or artistic or scientific), or if in general they have higher density in the neo-cortex, they have higher thought processing ability overall. So this affects 1 and 2. I guess southies have a high neuronal density which enables them to bring in a lot of thought and be heavy headed instead of light headedness.

Features 3 and 4 (the number of neurons and higher associative connections between them) passed on through genetics is what increases their maturity level and ability to bring in a lot of thought amongst south indians. For non-south indians since they dont have too high neuronal density/deeper pathways, their activation is not wasted/diluted in several neuronal connections in one particular thought area and neither does it go too deep in any their mind wanders,jumps to different thought areas easily and over a period of time, their mind is trained to traverse different thought areas hence they are able to generate a bit of deep thought. So when learning or thinking about things, South Indians look at the totality of things whereas north indians just think about the main point alone. But for non-tamil south indians, they have factor 1 and 2, but since their activation is diluted in these areas, they are not able to drive deeper thought, instead they dwell on a thought area but thinking about it comprehensively compared to northies. However, tamils are able to drive deeper thought as they have higher neuronal density(4) and even higher connection strength(3) as a result of which thought is able to flow out to other regions instead of stagnating and consequently able to think deeper. Apart from the above factors, if you are exposed to a lot of concepts-scientific/hi funda, knowing a lot(factor 4 mentioned below) will also enable one to construct deeper logic. thats why people in developed countries with good education,information and knowledge are able to thing about deeper things and come up with a lot of ideas and concepts. But apart from the impact of society/environment, the natural ability to consider different factors also comes inherently/genetically.

neuronal density helps in factor1

connectivity between areas affect factor 3b
knowledge helps factor 3b

activation, threshold(health of neurons) help in activeness, fluidity

These are generalised scores.Some individuals of a group may exceed the avg value mentioned. 20 doesnt mean no room for improvemet. Africans – 13 Chinese/Asians – 12 White Europeans – 16 Jewish- 17 Arab – 15 NI: 17,18 BE: 19 TA: 20 MA: 19 TE: 18 kA: 18 To recap.. The above 3 are natural/inherent abilities determined mainly by genetics , how one has conditioned their mind to think(reflection of the background) and also healthy brain activity by means of healthy consumption.To tackle a complex concept..many abilities need to come together – the depth, the correctness, and considering all factors . A concept/thought that has depth and is correct in logic is not necessarily a comprehensive one if it doesnt take into account the third dimension. For eg.rajiv malhotra may have the depth and correctness, but just by the way they speak one can feel that someone like gurumurthy considering a greater breadth of things in his mind while putting forth a point. Also there is a difference between amount of thought/factors considered simultaneously(1) and the amount of thought. Amount of thought is simply just pondering a lot about superficial stuff without a great depth of logic,correctness of logic or processing a lot of factors simultaneously. This amount of thought is particularly high for young/neotenous minds..u know they say they have a lot of imagination and fancy things on their mind(which is similar to 3b – breadth of thought or 5)kinda thing….. they dont really dwell on a particular thought area but think about different things associated and ponder a greater breadth(3b/5) of things in their mind.To differentiate the process in young vs old peoples brain, In old peoples brain many thoughts(the neural pathways representing them) have really strong associations with each other and with certain other thoughts. This means people get to these thought areas very easily and stay in these thought zones/areas for a long time as they have stronger weightage in that section of brain. In young peoples mind, no thougth area/zone has relatively high neural connection/association weightage and hence they move to different thought areas easily. As people grow up, they should develp the ability to create this neural connection/association weightage(learning is the process of creating neuralconnection weightages) in such a way to create deeper/wider logic thought flow and memory properly. people in whose brains these connection weightages are creatd well become good thinking people and the ones in whose brain, these connection weightages are not formed well either because of genes or nurture or conditioning become not so bright people.People who consume a lot of spicy food/fishy food/heahlthy brain cells development also have higher activity in the brain..which depends on these age and health factor mostly..nevertheless there is also a gradient based on the different groups..i mean Tamils or bengalis generally may have a higher brain activity compared to lets say a punjabi or a kannada, but it also depends on age and health too..so its difficult to come up with scores for these. This along with the memory factor depends on age and health and so not making a generalised scored for these and not considering these as primary intelligent quotients In the end, components 1,2 and 3a,b are all thoughts/neuronal activation in different orientation.Which means anyone who puts an effort can exceed in those components.and their brain structure(genetic) and conditioning/nurture from background helps too. The below are aspects depending on the society where they live and access to inputs/information(nurture). 4) Number of things they know(knowledge):So people receiving good eductaion/inputs from being part of a knowledgeble circle/city with exposure will know all the important/sophisticated hi-fi things and whether your city has good education,knowledge and ideas floating around(whereby you get the knowledge-building blocks to form new ideas). this also helps them in formulating complex/sophisticated/hi-funda thoughts. one indicator of this ability is the amount of time and effort people spend in browsing/acquiring new information across any field. These are generalised scores.Some individuals of a group may exceed the avg value mentioned. 21 doesnt mean no room for improvemet. Africans(in africa) – 11 Chinese – 14 White Europeans – 20 Jewish- 21 Arab – 13 NI: 18 BE: 19 TA: 20 (engineering,nobel laureates, and education level of chennaiites) MA: 19 TE: 17 kA: 16 5)Number of new things they think about/amount of brain activty: Sometimes..even people with higher activity potential,deeper & correct logical thinking ability..do not necessarily think about many different things, for reasons such as they might be very conservative and are not very keen or inquisitive about other things. They are just happy thinking about the same things again and again..or rather forced to be that way becoz of work/society(..imagine a I.T. developer vs a bohemian artist), and appear as if they arent generating different/a variety of thought. For example monks living simple life and having simple thoughts. Neotenous/childish people do not curb their thinking and generate thought about different things and there fore may be one up compared to a conservative person based on variety of their thinking. People having fun and exploring new areas score high in this.respect to a particular thing/thought, whereas here its about keeping an free mind and observing/wondering about a lot of things they come across. The pattern of this thought is similar to 3b, the small difference is in 3b its about associating different things with the particular concept/thought in contention, whereas this is about making an conscious effort to explore different things. This is reflected in the importance to art/novelty/culture/celebrations given in the society also considering the economic constraints. These are generalised scores.Some individuals of a group may exceed the avg value mentioned. 20 doesnt mean no room for improvemet. Africans – 11 Chinese – 12 White Europeans – 19 Jewish- 20 Arab – 13 NI: 17,18 BE: 19 TA: 17 MA: 18 TE: 17 kA: 15,16 The developed, rich and multicultural countries obviously have a lot of interesting stuff going on.Closer scoes doesnt mean that certain indians’ thought is similar to western thought – they think of drastically different things/issues in the west and here. But things are also a bit eventful and a lot going on here in India. 6)Prior Exposure and conditioning with Deeper thoughts/philosophy : South indians’ thoughts are predisposed and skewed towards maturity..They are conditioned(by society) to feel right about being less aggressive..less aggressiveness being associated with maturity. So exposure to high funda logic from their society..will steer their thoughts in the right way..and will help them in achieving a superior logical position.for eg. how people and everyone in certain societies are influenced by religious or other philosophical teachings followed by that society. So some south indians truely understand why its good to be mature, however a vast majority(who do not exercise much thought) are just mature because sub-consciously it feels right and appropriate in that society and sub-consciously get to that higher logical position. This is not the same as the impact of ones background in the way they generate/construct logic or thought mentioned in 3 These are generalised scores.Some individuals of a group may exceed the avg value mentioned. 20 doesnt mean no room for improvemet. Africans – 10 Chinese – 18 White Europeans – 11 Jewish- 15 Arab – 16 NI: 16 BE: 17 TA: 20 MA: 19 TE: 19 kA: 19 May be a lot of SE asian communities exposed to South Indian rulers have a maturity level of 18 a reason for the southies to occupy the moral higher ground is the aggressive and self-centred nature of northies. It is well know that southies are more mature/passive whereas are northies are more aggressive and forth-coming. In a north indian circle,a few of the good looking centre of attractions dont really care about how they make the others around them feel. When they are the centre of attraction, the other have to resort to being the not -so preferred/invisible losers and have to pretend to have fun by being an extra/ a side-kick to those aggressive ones, despite feeling bad inside…for eg the girl wearing the green shirt in 00.22-00.23 – look at how superficially she is shaking her head and made to look like a fool

north and south Indians are culturally and genetically closest to each other compared to any other ethnic group like say persians or arabs… The differences in intellect are primarily are brought about from the physical differences and only to a small extent based on history..for eg. the guptas or magadhas or mauryas before covered all of what people consider the northern part( i mean the marathis and orissa up to kashmir,indus in the north-west front) ..and so that belt was sorta were culturally similar. Even in the hottest places of the northern belt, they had a mix of both hot and cold seasons..as in if it was hotter for 9 months, at least for 3 months they had cold season. The cold weather makes muscles stronger and firmer and also gives rise to firm/sharp and neotenous features. This mix of climate is very good biologically speaking in contrast to an monotonous climate. And in the south, the climate was mainly hot with the exception of hilly regions and it does not get as cold and chilly as it gets up north. This makes skin,musles dry and saggy or slightly puffy features – however you would describe it. These skin n muscles never get a chance to firm up as there are no cold seasons in the year. And so the physical features of south indians are less neotenous(youthful is the simple translation)..like non-flatter face, bigger eyes, lesser distance between eyes, nose and mouth compared to the rest of the facial area, dark dry and thick skin etc. One cannot claim that physical neoteny will not have any effect on the intellectual neoteny of people. A society, of group of people where its people have a lot of neotenous features will feel and act more neotenous and thereby making the culture of the group more neotenous, and the neotenous culture(with more singing,dancing, liberal attitude, forth coming and aggressiveness) will also shape and re-inforce neoteny in the physical looks and the faces of its people. So even a smaller percentage of physical differences can sometime lead to a lot of differences..for example a society where there are 60% physically neotenous people-their culture is mainly going to be neotenous. Whereas a society where 60% of its people have mature physical traits and 40% noetenous traits..here the culture of the society will tend to be more mature. And if the culture is mature, the later generations will be more mature and if the culture is neotenous, the later generations will be more neotenous. the community of deepika padukone..gowd saraswat brahmins..even though they have nice and fair features, they are quite mature because of the cultural closeness of konkani with kanada and south, and hence deepika comes across as distinctly mature as comapred to someone from maharashtra- closer to karnataka border. The only north indian actress who strikes me as a mature(not naturally neotenous in behaviour) person is madhuri dixit. I cannot think of any south indian actress who is not mature(vineetha thottumkal maybe). Some other examples of how the culture you are in affects your look. When i try to look for mudaliar brides in Bharath matrimony, I can notice how some of them born and brought up in the north, with not too strict of parenting look more cuter and look just like north indians. If you browse saurashtran profiles( who supposedly settled in TN some 300 years back), they look very similar to south indians despite having fair skin. And take the examples of Madhavan and swara bhaskar or meghna naidu, they look and act more of north indian than typical south indian faces. Like I said before , it is all thought oriented in different ways/directions. Two people having the same amount of activation potential in the brain might focus and direct their potential in different ways (1,2,3a,3b or 5) leading to different personalities(although it also depends on the structure of neurons in the brain which determine the ease in which direction the thought might flow) and so any group, if they can focus enough achieve a high score in any of the above factors. In other blogs ive discussed about nice guys finishing last and why people who think too much/geeks/nerds are not really that fun. To explain this with the above components, intelligent/nice/mature guys have higher scores/orientation components in 1 and 6. 6 is especially a fun killing component as it deals with the code to conduct oneself in the society ,discipline, maturity and stuff. 6 kinda kills the spontaneous thinking that comes about with the 5th component and 1 is a drag on 3b. 5 and 3b are the components of neoteny,being spontanious, interesting and fun thoughts, whereas 1 makes a person dwell/stagnate in a particular component and think about it thoroughly like nerds. This is why south indians are doing well in technical/I.T. / law etc .3a(depth) is also good, if the thought is a fun thought – like some nice poets and writers have good scores in this component and they are comparitively fun/romantic people too. However if 3a(depth) is in a mature/nerdy thought, that works the opposite way – like it does for tamils – not in their wit(mean to say they have good sense of humour) but in their philosophical(like conservatism,tradition,patriotism) part.and 3a works in a good way for bengali girls and make them very engaging and fun. The areas and the scores may be updated as i get to think about it more.

I read two of your posts namely “Get Your Theory Right” and “North Indians vs South Indians.” I appreciate your efforts to think deep and analyze topics such as these.

I sense a need for assertive mentions of ethnic superiority or say “lack of ethnic inferiority” in your writing. I personally am of the opinion that intellectual strengths and attitude patterns are highly subjective. Also no ethnic group needs to be superior than the other. Just because a million idiots claim theirs to be great doesn’t make them great. All humans exhibit traits, characteristics and intellectual abilities of varied intensities and various levels that may be the result of Nature, Nurture and Choice. We all are made up of multiple elements in this world and not all of them are genetically transferred. Therefore I would request you to consider the “Nurture” and “Choice” elements that may influence social behavior and intellectual abilities. Irrespective of race, religion, gender, caste and native language, humans tend to be molded by the situations and circumstances they go through. So if someone says they are superior because of their lineage/ancestry, they are probably under a grossly misguided state of mind. We all go through similar thought processes before we recognize reality and embrace truth.

Cultural Superiority is another strong flavor I felt while reading your blog. I don’t think there is need for any cultural superiority. If one person looks down upon other cultures, then would it be right to say that the person’s culture is partly responsible for teaching such culture-hating philosophies? No we can’t. That individual has been nurtured by situations and has eventually chosen to hate other cultures and so is their social behavior negative towards other cultures. Hating others is never a way for protecting oneself. I feel your writing may be well received by those who tend to have a strong opinion of non-tamil cultures being inferior/bad compared to tamil/south-indian cultures, although I would say, your point-of-views are relatively more neutral compared to those individuals.

I have personally seen many individuals who openly express their anger/dissent for cultures other than their own because they have had bad/hurtful experiences with those cultures, either during their stay outside their native land or from their peers from other cultures. Let’s not take these things seriously as such behaviors are a symbol of emotional retaliation to the insults/losses they have experienced at the hands of individuals from other cultures. We can never estimate the worth of any culture based on the behavior of a few individuals that we have seen in our own circles.

For the record, I am from Chennai and my native language is Tamil. I would request you to write about bringing about inter-cultural harmony by means of eradicating this “Mine is better than yours” attitude among people. We all have but one life and I see no reason to waste any waking moment of that in hatred and prejudice. Thanks again for sharing your views. Keep writing.

Dear CrazyMotts,
I understand your arguments about cultural superiority and pride bringing about resentment and confrontations. I have come across politically correct statement such as ‘beauty,Intellect etc are subjective’ and so on many times before. But I have now come to believe that all these politically correct thinking and lying to oneself – for example telling africans,dark indians that balck is equally attractive as fair skin and that beauty is subjective, is only causing tremendous frustation to the related groups as there are biases in real life, and that its simply not the case. The reasons for me speaking out plain and expressing some extreme or politically incorrect view points – I have mentioned in some of my earlier blogs. I guess with my youtube Vlogs and stuff, I have been able to connect with many tamils some of the things ive said earlier are most definitley what many needed to hear. By that I dont mean I am asserting something that i dont believe. What im saying – i dont care if I come across as prejuidiced, I know that I am able to connect with and comfort some tamils,Desis out there who are truely frustrated with things going around. And these are the only audience that i care about. BTW i have also considered the Nature & nurture aspects of it I think.

I am not being arrogant, and I can appreciate the way you think. But I just think I need to be more honest in what i write. besides im not very eloquent, and that may make my blog come across as more prejudiced than what I intend it to be.

You are right about the real life biases and the frustration it causes among people but a solution to that definitely does not involve a “retaliatory hatred.” It is good to write for a target audience but matching the target audience’s frustration is not going to help them solve their problems. Please give them an insight into why people behave the way they do, especially when their actions hurt the sentiments of different groups of people. I guess that would help people to look further deep into such issues and understand the root cause.

I don’t intend to call you arrogant or your writing prejudiced. I am no one to judge you by the way you write. I feel the same way you do about being honest in what we write. I only intend to point out that too much fussing over the symptoms of a problem cannot help identify the cause of the problem. Being neutral doesn’t make anyone politically correct and political correctness is not a mandatory requirement, especially when expressing one’s views in a honest, straight-forward fashion. It is a natural tendency to expect a reason for strong opinions, especially when they tend to breed negative images about other cultures and a mere “tit-for-tat” would only weaken the argument.

I did hear views similar to yours from people who work in large companies. Some said their bosses are from other cultures and they practiced biased treatment based on cultural backgrounds. Some of them bought expensive phones and bikes simply because their colleagues are making fun of them for not owning those items. A closer look into the group dynamics of such social atmospheres tells me that there is a fear of being dominated and taken advantage of among the members of the group and it is that fear that partly causes them to behave the way they do.

If bullying on the basis of ethnicity and cultural background is the issue, the bullies are to be blamed and not the ethnicity or cultural background of the bullies. Bullying does cause frustration among the victims. The first help such victims of discrimination need is a clear understanding of the problem they are facing and what such problems might turn them into. We have the right to defend ourselves but it cannot be allowed to impact and change our behavior towards other cultures altogether. Just my thought.

While I cant deny having unfortunate experiences in my life, I wouldnt consider my blog as ‘retaliatory hatred’.

I have in a number of my previous blogs claimed north indians as being much more attractive than south indians and gone on to break down the reason for why i think so. This is the exact same thing, only that im claiming south indians are intelligent – I understand that this is slightly different in that – as im a southie myself and this is gonna come across as biased. I have also mentioned something about aggressivenss etc…but just like how it sounds bad here, the aggressiveness is used in a positive context in the other blog. I realise this blog looks borderline hateful, but its been constructed the exact same way as my blog on looks, where things are opposite..if that makes sense. Plus I have a disclaimer in the begining

And yes, the aryan vs dravidian and the notions of superiority/inferiorty are something that I have tried to address time and again, not just in these blogs but also my videos and in comments and discussions elsewhere. And I really havent catered my point for a british audience, so my perspective on pride in our culture n existence are something that all the indian readers can share I suppose. I mean, lack of ethnic inferiority is good rite? I hope that you get to read my other blogs and realise thats the way i say things outright

Everyone is entitled to have their opinion and so do you. So you are free to say anything outright. Lack of ethnic inferiority is always a positive thing but self-proclaimed superiority would not serve the purpose. The idea about lack of ethnic inferiority would at least involve a mild mention of equality and need for the same, especially when stressing the existence of inequality. Reversing the equation in one way refers to ethnic inferiority being enforced as a default assumption, except the subject being a different ethnic group. This is a fallacy in itself and would fail to reinforce the no-inferiority point that is being presented in the first place.

Your positive mention about one group’s “physical attractiveness” cannot be matched with your claim of the other group’s “intellectual superiority.” You are free to say it outright but complaints and praises cannot be matched on a mathematical scale as the subject of both statements are intangible and mutually exclusive aspects of mankind.

I agree that your target audience is the Indian crowd and I agree with the disclaimer too. Someone looking beautiful and someone being intelligent are your observations and they need not be the same everywhere to everyone, meaning, the interpretations that you wish to share are those relating to the specific groups that you have observed and not those groups in a generalized context. A brief look into your criteria for assessment of groups and the conditions under which you made the observations would help the readers get your perspective more precisely. You did mention that a 10 doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement. That is an element of fairness you have added to your interpretation. The same is needed in the other aspects of your discussion too.

The bottom line is not “How can a person say so?” but in fact it is “On what basis would a person say so?” Thanks again for freely sharing your opinions with me. This is by far the longest and most intellectually stimulating conversation I have ever had with a fellow blogger.

yep, im no sociologist, and these are based entirely on the few observations i have made..no statistical test of significance or anything done.
This is a very casual blog, yet I only try to make points that I genuinely feel and on many occasions have been able to connect with people who feel the same way about these point i make. I dont just simply say things to balance things out or looking for an equalising equation between different groups.

If this has been hateful, your comments against it being a tamil yourself has made up for it a little bit.

But I also wanna mention that, i mean because im a tamil –
There is a serious lack of confidence and outgoingness amongst tamils , which is very important in this time of globalisation. So whatever I can do..via blogging or talking to people, thats gonna give reasons for us to be proud,confident and in a positive state of mind – i try to do it. Its no surprise that this is my agenda, but if my blogs seem blatantly biased or lacks logic, people are free to pay no mind to it.